As Nvidia Corp. demonstrated its next-generation GeForce code-named Kepler in action at Game Developers Conference (GDC) and got applauds for impressive performance, a Chinese web-site published an image of what it claims to be GeForce GTX 670 Ti graphics card.

Epic Games, a major game designer, astonished the GDC12 attendees with its Samaritan demo, which depicts next-generation video-game graphics effects using Nvidia GeForce GTX "Kepler" hardware. Created in a dark, futuristic setting, the demo utilized a host of advanced rendering techniques that smoothly tessellated and morphed facial features, created realistic street scenes using point light reflections, and replicated the work of the best movie directors through the use of fine-tuned out of focus bokeh filters.

Back at GTC11, a similar demo was unoptimized and was run on three Nvidia GeForce GTX 580 graphics boards in multi-GPU mode. This time, however, at GDC12, the Samaritan (which is based on the tweaked Unreal Engine 3 demo) was rendered using one Nvidia GeForce GTX "Kepler" graphics cards. Potentially, this proves that the next-gen Kepler architecture is two or more times faster than the existing Fermi architecture in its model 580 form. The demo video is available below.

The board has two MIO connectors, which are found only on high-end products, to provide three-way or four-way multi-GPU SLI configurations. The new adapter has DisplayPort, two dual-link DVI-I and HDMI display connectors. In addition, the card seems to have tricky PCIe power connectors previously found on an alleged Kepler-class graphics board.

Nvidia has very high expectations for its Kepler generation of graphics processing units (GPUs). The company claims that it had signed contracts to supply mobile versions of GeForce “Kepler” chips with every single PC OEM in the world. In fact, Nvidia says Kepler is the best graphics processor ever designed by the company. Unfortunately for Nvidia, yields of chips made using 28nm process technology at TSMC, including Kepler, are lower than the company originally anticipated and therefore their costs are high and Nvidia's chief executive recently complained that the company cannot get enough wafers.